Pliny: Natural History, Vol. IV

that have begun to be counted among the inhabitants will be discussed among the fruit-bearing trees. For the present, we shall trace the foreign ones, beginning with that most beneficial to health.

15 The Assyrian apple original: "Malus Assyria", which others call the Median apple, cures poisons. Its leaf is like that of the arbutus, with thorns interspersed. The fruit itself is not eaten; it excels in its scent, as do the leaves, which, when stored with garments, ward off the harmful bites of animals. The tree itself bears fruit at all hours: some falling, some ripening, and others just budding.
16 Various nations have attempted to transfer it to themselves because of the excellence of the remedy, using earthenware vessels, with breathing holes provided for the roots (it is well to remember this for all plants intended to be transported a long distance, so that these things may be said once for all); but it has refused to grow except among the Medes and in Persia. This is the fruit whose seeds, as we have said, the Parthian nobles boil into their food for the sake of sweetening their breath. No other tree is praised among the Medes.
17 VIII. In mentioning the nation of the Seres Chinese, we have already spoken of their wool-bearing trees, as well as the size of the trees in India. Virgil has celebrated one of the trees peculiar to India, the ebony, stating that it grows nowhere else. Herodotus preferred to understand it as belonging to Ethiopia, in place of tribute

paid to the Kings of Persia, the Ethiopians paid a hundred logs of its wood every third year, along with gold and ivory.